Research on the theory of mind development in deaf children is a new and emerging area of study. There has not been much research conducted on the matter, with the first research study being published in 1995. Since then only about twelve other studies have been conducted to look into the theory of mind development among deaf children.
The development of the theory of mind held two opposing views. One view known as the “theory theory” (Gopnik and Wellman 1994) explained the construction of theory of mind from the child’s observations of other people’s behavior, postulation of theoretical entities, beliefs, desires, and causal relationships, and the revision or invention of his or her own theories in response to the events that cannot be accommodated …show more content…
Even though these theories diverge in very obvious ways, it’s important to recognize that both theories hold the theory of mind development as an occasion of distinct knowledge that occurs at a specific time of one’s life.
A theory of mind has matured around age five for typically developing children. A fully developed theory of mind requires the child to understand the fact that other people have minds of their own and beliefs, emotions, and desires that might be different from their own. Research that has been conducted for studying the theory of mind often uses tests of egocentrism and perspective taking, rehearsal and memory, and perception and belief. According to the entry from Karchmer’s Context, Cognition, and Deafness, “Adults in Western cultures typically predict and explain people’s actions with reference to the actor’s beliefs and desires” (114). This supports the idea that people’s actions are driven by desire, …show more content…
In their research they found less than half of their deaf participants, which ranged from nine to thirteen years old, passed the false-belief test. In their study they used a version of the unexpected location test developed by Wimmer and Perner (1983) to test theory of mind. For this task, a child was asked to predict where someone would look for an object after it had been moved to another location without the person knowing. The test was administered using a combination of signed and spoken English. Where hearing children are expected to pass this false-belief test at the age of four, deaf children in this study were not able to pass the test at the ages of nine to thirteen. “The deaf children’s poor performance at a advanced age suggested a significant delay in their theory of mind development” (Karchmer 117). For Peterson and Siegal’s study, the participants were all children of normal nonverbal intellect, and there weren’t any visible patterns between nonverbal IQ and rate of pass/fail or chronological age and rate of pass/fail. The researchers also noted that there were similarities between the deaf children’s performance and autistic children’s performance based on previous research (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and Frith 1985). Peterson and Siegal took this information and used it as a means for argument against the modular theory development of theory of
The development of the theory of mind held two opposing views. One view known as the “theory theory” (Gopnik and Wellman 1994) explained the construction of theory of mind from the child’s observations of other people’s behavior, postulation of theoretical entities, beliefs, desires, and causal relationships, and the revision or invention of his or her own theories in response to the events that cannot be accommodated …show more content…
Even though these theories diverge in very obvious ways, it’s important to recognize that both theories hold the theory of mind development as an occasion of distinct knowledge that occurs at a specific time of one’s life.
A theory of mind has matured around age five for typically developing children. A fully developed theory of mind requires the child to understand the fact that other people have minds of their own and beliefs, emotions, and desires that might be different from their own. Research that has been conducted for studying the theory of mind often uses tests of egocentrism and perspective taking, rehearsal and memory, and perception and belief. According to the entry from Karchmer’s Context, Cognition, and Deafness, “Adults in Western cultures typically predict and explain people’s actions with reference to the actor’s beliefs and desires” (114). This supports the idea that people’s actions are driven by desire, …show more content…
In their research they found less than half of their deaf participants, which ranged from nine to thirteen years old, passed the false-belief test. In their study they used a version of the unexpected location test developed by Wimmer and Perner (1983) to test theory of mind. For this task, a child was asked to predict where someone would look for an object after it had been moved to another location without the person knowing. The test was administered using a combination of signed and spoken English. Where hearing children are expected to pass this false-belief test at the age of four, deaf children in this study were not able to pass the test at the ages of nine to thirteen. “The deaf children’s poor performance at a advanced age suggested a significant delay in their theory of mind development” (Karchmer 117). For Peterson and Siegal’s study, the participants were all children of normal nonverbal intellect, and there weren’t any visible patterns between nonverbal IQ and rate of pass/fail or chronological age and rate of pass/fail. The researchers also noted that there were similarities between the deaf children’s performance and autistic children’s performance based on previous research (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and Frith 1985). Peterson and Siegal took this information and used it as a means for argument against the modular theory development of theory of